I’m writing this one week and one day after the November election. It’s also Veterans Day, and I’m a proud Navy vet.
Marijuana was on the ballot in several states, and the country continued its march ahead toward eventual federal legalization. I figured Arizona, Montana and New Jersey would easily pass their recreational marijuana initiatives, but I wasn’t so sure about South Dakota, a very conservative Midwestern state. As it turned out, legal cannabis was approved in all four, as was medical marijuana in Mississippi and South Dakota.
Am I surprised? Not really. Four years ago, I wrote in this magazine that “the train had left the station” and speculated that with Alaska and Oregon joining Colorado and Washington, the writing was on the wall. From my perspective, political views and convictions always seem to take a back seat to tax dollars and jobs. Of course, Idaho may prove me wrong as that state seems perfectly content to see its residents driving into Oregon, Washington and soon Montana to buy legal marijuana, but time will tell.
And while cannabis was a big winner in the election, Donald Trump was not.
My editorial from the December 2020 issue of Marijuana Venture — “Trump, the wart” — got me a few emails. Some loved it. Others hated it. One of the “haters” commented that I should stick to business and not risk alienating people in the industry who voted for — or support — Trump. His reasoning was that I could lose 50% of my readers and advertisers. He’s got a point, and now that the election is over, I’ll try to avoid expressing my views on the ousted president.
However, when I really think about it, my guess is that Marijuana Venture’s readership is probably 70-80% anti-Trump. I say this because every current legal rec state, with the exception of Alaska, is blue, and in those states, a large percentage of the folks in the cannabis industry are likely liberal or left-leaning. That said, Joe, I hear you and thank you for expressing your views and taking the time to write.
A couple of other quick tidbits:
– Trump predicted that if he lost, the stock market would crater. He got that “bigly” wrong. Barely a week after the election, the Dow Jones index is approaching record highs. On November 3, it was at 27,480. Eight days later, it was up nearly 2,000 points to 29,388. It seems to me that Wall Street wants to get back to normalcy, predictability and trade policies that are based on what’s good for the country as a whole.
– Trump and his allies also predicted that after the vote, the COVID pandemic would suddenly disappear from the news. Another prediction Trump got wrong. The national headlines are ominous as the number of reported cases shot up almost as fast as the stock market. Nationally, new coronavirus infections have been over 100,000 per day for the past two weeks. On November 11, we hit a record high of 143,000 — a high-water mark that that seems likely to have been surpassed multiple times before this magazine hits newsstands and readers’ mailboxes.
– And finally, I want to extend thanks to all veterans — and especially the guys who served with me on the USS Leahy (CG-16) in San Diego back in the late 1970s.